Poem is not just thudding, mute medallion;
not just dumb, a token. It’s also the big
CAN’T SORRY to a world of worry that this
isn’t enough this, that I’m that, I’m all,
all. Poem is the no to your yes. Ford Escape
hatch from big marketing. It’s a Juul break
when all you wanted was 10,000 spoons. Nothing cat-
chy, poem is death to all catchy. It’s the garbage
to your carefully cleaned & jerked syntax.

Cleaned and shanked.
Filleted. Stripped and hissing on a brazier.

Poems get ya. They know what ya think about.
Know ya secretly hate you, and maybe
not so secretly. Be this thing for a moment.
The tawdry DEAR GOD PLEASE NO when everyone
else nods in unison, “Hey yes, take our photo.
We are in love here. We do nice things now.”
I hate it all, Archibald. This WHAT WE’VE BECOME
when what we had been was cold, a heavy
medal pressed twixt forefinger and thumb.

Four jarheads
decided to forge ahead
with some of their crackpot
ideas, and you won’t
believe what happened next
but not because what happened
is so hard to believe
but because you’re cynical.
Just as every nickel
of cigarette and alcohol tax
is a “sin nickel” so also, my
brothers, do you preen
and wince while you disobey
the same God who instilled
in you a sense of wonder
you continue to defy,
and these four marines
stranded in a cave play out
out their oddball drama
on its walls as though, well,
it were okay to deify
the meta meta meta. As though
the Creator-creature relationship
were entirely wily, not
at all smiley. Smileless, that is,
though not at all simile-less.

Sometimes it begins this way:
Me, sitting in my old leather chair.
You, lying on the floor nearby,
banked in a shaft of pale sunlight,
appearing as a sleeping angel —
yet dead. Napping, rather.
Napping and you are not human,
love, but alien: green-skinned
with elongated head and shimmering,
towering, jet black eyes. When
you speak it sounds like a hundred
women whispering “Bimi, dimi,
bimi, dimi, wimi! Squimi bimi!”
I don’t know what you’re saying,
but I love it and love you though
right now I guess you might be dead.

If your god never disagrees with you
it might be an idealized version of yourself
or one of any number of other things
that never disagree with you—
a bench, a certain twist of foam in the surf
off the Cape of Good Hope. A cape
hanging in a costume shop.
A shopkeeper hanging around
a costume convention. Consider –
a universe in which nothing not only
disagrees with you but is even aware of you.
Humbling. Or should I say Kellerian,
all creatures of our God and King?

Secretly, and without telling anyone,
he had an effective game plan
for everything he did. This quiet
intentionality rubbed off on
his colleagues without them noticing.
What a time to work here, they thought,
not knowing why they thought it.
For, prior to that time, they’d grumbled,
groused, or merely moped, albeit
practically imperceptibly — like vapor
vanishing as the sun comes up.